


Twice Shy Love Bites

by SueDeeNimh



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Sam Winchester, Claiming Bites, Community: spn_reversebang, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Gadreel (Supernatural), Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2018, non-hunters AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-08-29 22:45:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16752883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SueDeeNimh/pseuds/SueDeeNimh
Summary: Sam's on his deathbed and his brother resorts to extreme measures. But the strange angel he found actually wants to talk to Sam before any kind of knot is tied.





	Twice Shy Love Bites

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[Art] Equals](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754497) by [SasTMK (OutOfLuck)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutOfLuck/pseuds/SasTMK). 



> Thank you so much to [BlindSwanDive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive) for being willing to eleventh-hour beta this, and to the extent you're not getting emotionally whiplashed around and thrown out of the story on hairpin turns, you have her to thank for making it immeasurably better than it was. Thanks also to the wonderful mods of the [SPN-Reversebang](https://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/) on LiveJournal, for running such an awesome challenge! And to my artist, hope you like this, hon! Follow the link above to kudos her art!

“Sam, you’re sick.” Dean looked worried and hangdog.

“I’m aware, thanks,” Sam said dryly from his hospital bed.

“But you’re not getting better,” Dean said, anguished.

“There’s nothing more I can do about that,” Sam said, and coughed. His lungs had been bad ever since the last fire, when he’d taken off his mask so it could help a dying omega breathe through the smoke. She had lived, and gotten out of the hospital a month ago, her mate helping her to walk again. Meanwhile Sam’s firefighter’s physique had slowly wasted away while his lungs succumbed to one infection after another and stubbornly refused to heal.

“Maybe...maybe there’s something _I_ can do,” Dean whispered.

But Sam heard. “Dean? Dean, I don’t want you doing anything _stupid_ ,” Sam said, but he couldn’t be vehement anymore. All the attempt got him was a coughing fit, and when it was over and he had the strength to drift his eyes open again, Dean was gone.

Sam knew his brother well enough. Dean would only take off now because he didn’t want Sam to argue him out of whatever desperate measure Dean had gotten in mind.

Sam waited and worried and hoped he’d have another chance to talk his brother out of anything idiotic before it was too late. There were plenty of fates worse than death, Sam thought. He knew Dean wouldn’t see it the same way, though. For Dean, there was nothing worse than losing his little brother.

* * *

“Sam?” Dean was back. Behind him, a man slightly taller hovered nervously in the doorway.

Nervous? Yes. Sam wondered why. He took a breath to ask, but the smell that invaded his body with the air answered him before he said a word. Omega-scent, ripe and rich, cascaded through his tired body, tripping levers and switches as though Sam could actually leap up from his hospital bed and ravish him right there. “What… Dean…”

“I’m sorry, Sam.” Dean looked guilty but determined. Dean was a beta, as their parents had been. He couldn’t understand what he was doing to Sam, as an alpha. Not really. “But I didn’t think you’d even want to see him if I explained.”

“Of course not,” Sam said, getting angry but trying to breathe carefully to keep from coughing. “What good exactly do you expect this to do? A last-minute bond so he can watch me die slowly and mourn my dead body for the rest of his life?”

“He can do more than that,” Dean said urgently. “Sam, don’t freak out, okay? I need you not to freak out. But — this is Ezekiel. He’s an angel.”

An angel. Sam felt shock washing through him on the heels of the life-changing scent still wafting through the air.

“What have you done, Dean?” he whispered.

Angels hated Sam, and Sam didn’t think much of angels, either. He’d used to look up to them, when he was young. Used to pray to them and everything. But that was before he’d met any. Now he knew they were all stuck-up pricks who’d mow you down without blinking if you stood between them and what they wanted.

And Sam was lying here without blockers. He’d been a teen last time he was off blockers long enough for it to matter. Going to a big university, they were practically required so that students didn’t start randomly fucking in the halls, and to be a firefighter they were really actually mandatory. If he’d tried to share his breathing mask with an Omega without being on blockers, even half-dead, it would have been nearly impossible to carry her out to safety, and if by some miracle he’d managed it anyway, her mate would have promptly tried to kill him. Being an Alpha or an Omega meant that the rational brain all too often took a backseat to emotion.

It was a good thing that most people were betas, less instinct-driven and capable of pair-bonding with anyone they chose. If an alpha claim-bit a beta, or a beta claim-bit an omega, they would be safe from meeting a stranger and suddenly going into a frenzy. The omega Sam had saved from the fire was bonded, so she would have been fine — only Sam would have lost control, if he hadn’t been on blockers, and one person could usually be shaken back into common sense if their partner was unreceptive. But if an unbonded alpha and omega met each other without being on blockers, their emotional reactions would feed off each other and spiral out of control fast. If their friends didn’t pull them away from the scene as quickly as possible, it was almost guaranteed they’d be ripping each other’s clothes off — in public, in a burning house, it didn’t matter — having enthusiastic sex against the nearest surface, and finishing it all up with a claim bite, if they weren’t interrupted. And interrupting could be dangerous to life and limb, since alphas were usually large, and cranky when a bonding was disturbed.

Sam’s fists clenched in the sheets. He could smell that the strange omega -- angel, he reminded himself, that’s an angel -- was unclaimed, and only faint hints of blockers remained in his system — in either of their systems. His scent had changed already, growing excited in reaction to Sam’s, while Sam’s body clamored for him to roll up out of the bed he hadn’t left for days now, catch the stranger in his arms and press him close, find out what he felt like and bury his mouth...

No. His reactions were slowed by his illness, but the end would be the same. He couldn’t believe Dean had done this to him. “Get him out,” he begged. “We can talk about this, just… please, Dean.”

“Sam,” the stranger said. Dean had told him Sam’s name, or he had read it out of Sam’s head. “This is not pity. I need you as much as you need me. I, too, am dying, and my kind will only hasten my death if they find me.”

Sam’s interest stirred, in spite of his misgivings. What was the omega’s story? Was there a possibility this could actually work? But he shook his head. “Shouldn’t have ... come without … asking,” he managed, before he began to hack as his lungs once again tried to turn themselves inside out.

“Do something,” he heard Dean demand. “Fix him.”

 _Let me die in peace,_ Sam wanted to say, but he couldn’t form words.

“Sam does not want me,” the strange angel told Dean. Sam waited to feel hands laid on him anyway, healing if the angel was strong enough to focus his will, or just mindlessly caressing if the omega instincts rose to the fore. Sam knew Dean would do nothing to stop it either way.

Instead, the door shut, and he heard slow, dragging footsteps retreating down the hall. The entrancing scent slowly began to fade from the room; despite himself, Sam wanted to chase it.

His coughing was easing. Dean slumped into his chair next to the bed. “I’m sorry, Sam.” He put his head in his hands. “I just… I need you to have a reason to live, man.”

“Why…” Sam breathed. “Why do you trust him?”

“He answered my ad,” Dean said. “And he protected me from another angel, one of the ones who hate us.”

“Not much to go on,” Sam said, and waited.

“He’s been… honorable, I guess,” Dean said slowly. “Innocent, maybe. Not a trace of the bullshit all the other angels have been spewing the last few years.”

“That’s something,” Sam admitted. He couldn’t help finding the angel intriguing, even with his scent fading into the industrial air conditioner. “His background checks out?”

“I asked Cas. He says Ezekiel is a good one. A good soldier.”

Sam shuddered. Every human instinct rebelled against making an Omega a soldier, but angels were different. All angels were soldiers, except certain specialized subclasses like cupids and reapers. But even those lived in rigid hierarchy, following orders — you might say _religiously_.

Angels didn’t care about gender as much as humans did. They had it, more or less, but they manufactured bodies for angels on the ground to use and assigned angels to bodies willy-nilly. Human omegas tended to be much smaller than average, while alphas like Sam were almost always large. But angels didn’t always get assigned a body that matched their gender, and sometimes they were bizarre, with four eyes, perhaps, or scaled feet. Sam was never sure if some angels requested that kind of crap or if the body-makers just got bored and liked to tinker.

But most of them were extraordinarily tall, which said a lot about angels as a whole, really. Mostly that they liked looking down their noses at the mud-monkeys. And that they liked being able to intimidate anyone they felt like.

There were legends of angels claiming humans, long ago, and their cursed offspring. Alpha angels with omega humans, naturally. Betas, angel or human, were far too sensible, and tended to leave all the bad ideas of passion to those who were forced by their body chemistry to suffer them.

But Sam had never, ever heard of an alpha human with an omega angel, and he’d read as much on the topic of angels as anybody.

It was almost certainly a bad idea. But he couldn’t help feeling a little frisson of excitement as he thought of it. He’d been resigning himself to die, not because he wanted to but because he saw his chances dwindling. Optimism had only gotten him burned. Better to go out on his terms than fight and lose, even though he knew how much it would hurt his brother. He was so tired of fighting.

But he wanted to live, now, too. He couldn't help it when there was a mystery to be solved or a soul to save. He wanted to get to know this strange angel who was offering to bond him. Why would he do it? Was he in such bad trouble? Could Sam protect him from it?

He _knew_ that this was exactly the response Dean had hoped for, why he’d taken the risk of bringing a strange angel omega here to Sam in the first place. But it didn’t matter he knew he was being manipulated. It still worked. Dean was his brother. They had lifetimes of history together, demands they’d made of each other and mountains they’d freely climbed to save each other. And Dean wanted Sam to live, to fight for life, badly enough to pull this stunt.

“All right,” Sam told Dean, because in the end, he could never turn Dean down. “I’ll try. Send him back in.”

Dean looked so happy he nearly glowed, and jumped up to leave.

“But Dean?” Sam said.

“Yeah?” Dean turned back quickly.

“Don’t think you’re forgiven. If this works, we’re going to have a _long_ fucking talk, man. And if it doesn’t…” Sam paused, trying not to start coughing again. Dean leaned closer to hear. “If he turns out to be a con of some sort, I’ll kill him myself and then die cursing your name. Do you hear what I’m saying, Dean?”

Dean flinched. Good. But he straightened his shoulders, and nodded shortly. “Understood.”

And then he was gone. Sam desperately wanted to stay awake for what came next, but he was exhausted. His eyes slid closed, and sleep overcame him.

* * *

Sam woke smiling. That glorious scent was back, permeating the air around him, and his lungs filled a little more easily with it than Sam had grown accustomed to, as he had gotten worse and worse.

“Hello, Sam Winchester,” a deep voice said, close by the bed. He opened his eyes, already knowing what he’d see: the angel, Ezekiel, sitting in the chair by him.

“I took the liberty of beginning to heal you,” Ezekiel said. “I knew Dean was not lying when he told me you would see me again, but my powers are greatly reduced from what I once wielded. I am afraid I cannot make you as you were in an hour, or even a day. It may take a week or more.”

A week was nothing, when he’d been expecting to die. He’d been sick for months. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Even though you have your own reasons. Thank you.”

Ezekiel inclined his head. “I apologize for my intrusion,” he said. “Your brother is difficult to say no to.”

Sam huffed the tiny laugh that he’d learned so as not to start coughing. “Even for me.” He hesitated, examining his feelings. “Why… how are we able to talk right now?” He felt calm. There was lust simmering underneath, intense but distant: he could go up in flames with it, if he wanted, but it was like a clear sheet of serenity had been laid down atop the roiling mass of hormonal desire.

“It will not last forever,” the angel warned him. “And it was very difficult, fighting through my own — responses — to cast it on us both. But the spell required more will than raw power, and I thought you would appreciate the chance to talk, first.” He was looking down at the floor by the end, glancing up. Sam noticed with fascination he was actually blushing. He’d never seen an angel blush.

He really wanted to make it happen again and again. He wanted to lay him out in a bed and see how much of him he could get all red and flustered. But he also did want to talk, and not waste the gift Ezekiel had offered, and for a wonder, he _could_ set more primal desires aside. For now. ”Why are you in trouble with the other angels?”

“I trusted foolishly, once, long ago,” he said. “My brethren do not forget or forgive. They wish to see me as little as possible.” He paused, and added dryly, “I am inclined to cooperate, at least so far.”

“Long ago,” Sam said. ”How long?”

Ezekiel flinched. “Thousands of years,” he said quietly, and waited.

Even half-dead, Sam’s mind was quick. “Was it Lucifer?” he asked. “The one you trusted. Are you Fallen?”

The angel flinched terribly over his whole body. “I did not know!” he cried. “I am not Fallen, for at least they all believed that. I failed in my duty not from malice, only from blind foolishness.” Bitterness tinged his voice.

“All right,” Sam soothed. ”I believe you, too.” He paused. Ezekiel still looked distressed. “Would you like to ask me a question, now?”

“If I may…” Ezekiel began, and hesitated. “Why do all the other angels hate you so much?”

“You don’t know?” Sam was surprised. But if the other angels truly avoided talking to Ezekiel that much… “Dean’s friend, Castiel. He started having opinions of his own. Angels aren’t big on that, but when the rest of them wanted to take him back and mind-wipe him into an obedient little soldier, Dean and I wouldn’t let them. Dean killed one of them, Zachariah. And threatened more to anyone else who tried. They didn’t like it, but they liked the thought of all of humanity finding out Cas had defected even less, so they haven’t tried too hard to kill us because they know we’ve got the story ready to drop if anything happened.”

“I had wondered they did not try harder to block my way to you,” Ezekiel admitted. “Perhaps they hoped you would kill me and save them the trouble.”

Sam could feel his alpha protectiveness rising at the thought. “I don’t think so,” he growled automatically.

They were bonding already, just by breathing each other’s air, without any more physical contact than that. Sam already felt tied to this angel, this stranger who he felt increasingly certain was going to be _his._ And despite the soothing effect of the spell checking their lust, he was getting impatient to touch him. He wanted to kiss and do other things, too: an hour ago, he wouldn’t have said his body was up for anything, but now he felt his long-dormant cock stirring.

Ezekiel’s hand rested next to his, carefully not touching. Sam turned over his own hand and held it open, a silent offer. Ezekiel’s eyes held his as their hands finally touched, fingers twining. An electric thrill ran through Sam at his touch, gentle and tentative yet sure.

As unanticipated bondings went, Sam couldn’t help feeling like this was one of the better ways it could have gone.

* * *

Amazingly, the spell held through the rest of the day, perhaps aided by Sam’s infirmity and the last lingering traces of the angel’s blockers. The bond built steadily between them regardless of the lack of sex, though, thrumming through their joined hands as Ezekiel sat by the bed for hours until it was fully dark outside. They talked a little more when Sam was up to it, but a lot of talking wasn’t something he could do any more, so they just sat in silence a lot, too.

At last, the angel sighed. “Rest will do us both good,” he said. “I should go, and return again tomorrow.”

Sam squeezed his hand one more time and let it go. “Then go. I’ll look forward to tomorrow.”

“I doubt the spell will still hold that long,” Ezekiel said, hesitant. “Whether your body is strong enough or not.”

“Then my body will just have to be strong enough,” Sam said. He gave Ezekiel a small smile. “Because we’re not waiting any longer.” He put a bit of alpha growl in the last bit, and was satisfied to see the angel flush delicately.

“Tomorrow, then.” The angel rose from his chair and strode from the room hurriedly.

Sam laughed softly after him, wondering at the enormity of the change in his feelings a single day had wrought. He had woken that morning expecting to get on with dying, or perhaps to have to fight whatever hellish, harebrained alternative Dean had come up with. Sam wanted the right to die a natural, peaceful death when his time came, but his brother was never going to accept it without a fight. Sam understood wanting to save his brother; there were plenty of times he’d gone to the mat for Dean. But he’d respected Dean’s ”no,” when Sam had wanted to save Dean’s life through a doctor who claimed to have found immortality through organ transplants. Dean had actually died, then, before Castiel revived him. But Sam wasn’t sure that Dean would have been willing to respect Sam’s decision like that; Dean might have gone ahead and put Sam on the operating table whatever Sam had to say, if Dean thought it was best.

He was tired of thinking about Dean, right now. His thoughts returned to the tall, handsome angel; to the sweet way he ducked his head at Sam; to his earnest assurance that healing Sam would only take some time. Sam was too bone-tired to stay awake much longer, but he drifted off thinking of long, clean limbs and kind eyes, and he was smiling.

* * *

Dean did not show his face in the morning, which was fine, because Sam still wanted to read him the riot act and he was trying to save his energy now for Ezekiel. Instead, Jody came in mid-morning, knocking gently on his open doorframe to announce her presence. “Hey, Sam. How’re you doing?”

“Hey, Jody,” Sam smiled tiredly. “I might look like crap, but it’s better than it has been for a while, actually.”

“That’s good to hear,” she smiled. “Up to chatting if I stay for a bit?”

“Why don’t you just say you want to grill me about how it went?” Sam teased, smiling back. “Dean’s an ass, but it’s turning out okay so far.”

“I was going to lead up to it more gently,” Jody said with dignity.

“How far did Dean make you drive to get here?”

“Not far at all, I was in the area…” Jody sighed when Sam looked at her levelly. “Okay, I was finishing a call an hour and a half away, but it still wasn’t the whole three hours it would have been if I’d been home.”

“Well, good, I guess.” Sam could breathe better today, and his gentle huff didn’t even hurt.

“Sam, do you really think I wouldn’t have driven that whole three hours for you anyway?” Jody said. “Come on. Dean said you haven’t gotten out of bed in three days. I’d want to be here regardless of what happens.”

“You’re a true friend, Jody,” Sam said, heart warming. “Thank you for coming.”

“I’m just hoping you’re going to laugh at me for worrying after you get better,” she said. “And that you’re going to be okay with this angel, if it does work out with him.”

“I’m hopeful,” he told her quietly. “For the first time in a long time. And I do hope you’ll get the chance to meet him, eventually.”

She assessed him, and then grinned. “Just not until after you’ve had him to yourself for a while first, hey?”

“Exactly,” Sam grinned back. “He’s coming back today, but he didn’t say when. What time is it, anyway, Jody? How long do you think it’ll be?”

“It’ll be hard for him to resist the draw of the bond for very long, even if he’s an angel,” Jody said. “I’m actually pretty amazed he managed to leave for the night. Most people wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“He had some kind of spell to reduce the … demands of the bond, so we could talk, yesterday,” Sam said. “But it’s supposed to wear off today.” His fingers twisted at the edge of his sheet. “What if something happens to him, out there? What if it incapacitates him when the spell fades, and he can’t get to me? Or the angels find him and attack him?” He tried to throw his covers off restlessly.

‘Easy, Sam,” Jody soothed. “He’ll be fine. He’s taken care of himself this long, right? A few more hours isn’t going to hurt him.”

Sam knew she was right. He just had to convince his knuckles to unclench, and that was easier said than done. “But do you think he’ll be here _soon_?” he couldn’t help asking, even knowing Jody would laugh.

She did, but kindly.

He hadn’t coughed once, the whole conversation.

* * *

It was afternoon before Sam had another visitor. He’d passed the hour and thirty-seven minutes since Jody left staring at the clock. He _did_ feel better, still weak and he did cough occasionally, but better.

He was even sitting up when he heard a struggle occuring down the hallway, coming steadily closer to his room. He could hear male grunts and the heavy thuds of bodies slamming into walls, but it wasn’t long before they appeared in his doorway.

It was Castiel, in his old familiar vessel, and Ezekiel. Sam’s heart leapt to see his new bondmate. Of course, he must have asked Cas to help him stay away as long as possible, to give Sam as much time to heal as he could.

But the struggle now was real: they hit and shoved and grappled with each other, Ezekiel trying to get closer to Sam’s bed and Cas trying to keep him away.

“Ezekiel!” Sam called. “Cas, it’s okay, you can let him go now.”

“This is not Ezekiel,” Cas growled through his teeth, and Sam’s stomach dropped. “He lied about his name to you. What other lies has he told?”

“Wait, no,” Ez— no, not-Ezekiel begged Sam. “I have not told any other falsehoods. I can explain. Please.”

“I think you had better,” Sam said, feeling suddenly very cold. If this was a con… he hardened his voice. “What’s your real name?”

“Gadreel,” the angel said, sounding miserable, and Castiel flinched at the name and looked differently at him.

“You were the one…” Cas began.

“Do you know him?” Sam asked.

“I have never seen him before,” Cas said. “That alone lends itself to his claim. But all angels have heard the story of Gadreel, who once guarded the gates of the Garden of Eden yet foolishly let the serpent in. He has been locked away since that day, where no angel may lay eyes on him.”

“It is true,” Gadreel said, huddled miserably in on himself. “For my error I have paid without end. My name is cursed, and when your brother first summoned the aid of an angel, I did not know if I could trust him.” He raised his eyes to Sam’s face, then dropped them again. “I would have withheld any name rather than lie, but he was… insistent.”

“You let the serpent into the Garden,” Sam said, feeling a strange — was it _relief?_ He laughed, a short, sharp bark. “I know something about being strummed to Lucifer’s tune. Of all the people in the world, I wouldn't have rejected you for that.”

“Then I should have told you. I am sorry, Sam.” Gadreel said. It went against every fiber of Sam’s being not to reach out to him when he looked so dejected. _That’s your omega,_ his hindbrain told him, _in pain. Make him feel better, kiss him, do whatever it takes…_

But Sam could not afford to listen only to instinct. “Forget Dean. When would you have told _me_ your true name?”

“Before you claimed me,” the angel said, low. “I could not have stood to hear you call me by a false one then.”

“You can leave us now, Castiel,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off his omega.

“I am not sure if that is wise…” Cas began, but Sam cut him off.

 _Now, Cas,_ ” Sam growled, alpha impatience in his voice, expecting to be _obeyed_. Perhaps because he so rarely used that voice, it shut Cas up, and after a moment he nodded shortly and withdrew.

For better or worse, Gadreel was Sam’s now. It had gone too far for either of them to contemplate retreat; the mere thought of living separately, never seeing the other half of yourself again — Gadreel already felt like his other half — it was unendurable. The only way out would be to follow through on Sam’s threat from earlier: if “Ezekiel” turned out to be conning them, Sam had promised Dean, Sam would kill the angel before letting himself be mate-bound forever to someone who could not be trusted. It would mean Sam’s death too, of course, but that would mean little at that point.

Gadreel waited by the door, not coming closer. His head was bowed awaiting Sam’s reaction, but every muscle in his body quivered with the effort of holding himself back. Yet he did not move.

Sam had little reason to trust an angel. Every time, it seemed, they wanted nothing but to screw him and his brother over. Cas was better than most, but even he had made bad choices. Cas had hurt Sam, too. And the torture Sam had suffered at Lucifer’s hands did not even bear thinking about.

Gadreel was of the same stock. Did that mean he would betray Sam, too? It would be easier to choose a quick end now than to face that pain, of the one person who should be everything to Sam falling short, choosing instead to run counter to him. Such things were rare, but when they did happen, insanity inevitably resulted: alpha, beta, and omega alike. Far more often, the bond drew people’s inclinations naturally towards their bondmate’s — if Gadreel was an evil being, Sam could make him less so, but only by sacrificing his own character in equal measure.

Sam had promised himself he would die rather than be corrupted again. He’d been a pawn once in the war between Heaven and Hell. Never again, he wanted to scream, never again.

No. Sam forced himself to think. He’d never believed in judging anyone, human, angel, or monster, by their nature and not their actions. So what did Gadreel’s actions say about him?

He was not hasty, and he was considerate of Sam’s boundaries. He did not try to press himself closer, even when every instinct must be crying out for it, as Sam’s were even now. He had cast that spell yesterday, and removed himself from Sam’s presence not once but twice, all to give Sam space to make a considered decision. But he had not told Sam everything, Sam’s inner voice cried. His name, his crime…

But he _had_ told Sam yesterday. He’d told him that he had been a fool to trust Lucifer. That was the heart of it: faced with that, did the details even matter?

Sam’s inner war between fearing to trust any angel and wanting to trust Gadreel and make this angel his forever abruptly resolved itself as though there had never been a question there at all. The poorly banked fire in his body roared to life. “Gadreel.”

Gadreel’s head snapped up.

“Come here.”

The angel crossed the room so fast it didn’t seem quite human. “Sam Winchester.”

“Yes.” Sam started to smile.

“Does that mean you’ll have me?” Gadreel’s voice filled with hope.

Sam took a deep breath, flaring his nose to catch as much of Gadreel’s scent as possible. The deep breath didn’t make him start coughing like it would have yesterday. Then he pushed himself up from his high-tech deathbed. It felt like carrying two people’s weight just to make his legs bear his own gaunt frame, but it didn’t matter. Gadreel was there, and once their arms wrapped around each other, it wasn’t difficult anymore. Gadreel was almost as tall as Sam. Sturdy, too, especially for an omega, but that was angels for you. What was important right now was that he could support Sam while Sam took his face in his hands and, at long last, kissed him deeply.

The last crumbling remnants of the spell holding them in check withered and blew away, and the fire _blazed._ “Please,” Gadreel whispered, “take me.”

Sam couldn’t wait any longer. Usually the claim bite happened at the peak of passion, but usually that passion was happening between strangers, and Sam felt like he and Gadreel already knew each other. “I’m going to bite you right now,” he whispered, dragging his teeth lightly down the ridges of Gadreel’s neck.

Gadreel shuddered. “Yes,” he said.

Sam had waited long enough to taste this. He sank his teeth into the side of his angel's — his omega’s — neck, deep enough to break the skin, and felt the blood changes wrought by a sealed bond racing with each heartbeat through both of their bodies.

Gadreel flung his head back as he felt the reactions, and Sam took the opportunity to divest. His hospital smock fell easily out of the way, and Gadreel’s shirt put up little barrier to a determined assault: the snaps down the front were easy to rip open, and Sam wondered if he’d worn it for that reason.

Gadreel came back to focus on him, and Sam smiled gently. “You’re mine now, and no one else can have you,” he said, low and firm. “That’s what this means. Not the rest of the angels, not Lucifer himself. They don’t ever get to touch you again, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Gadreel’s eyes were wide and stunned, staring at Sam like he held the world.

“Good,” said Sam. Then he kissed his new mate again, and ran his hands down his sides. Strength had run into him from Gadreel’s touch again, and his body seemed fully functional: the new bond acted like a near-death jolt of adrenaline, convincing his muscles they could do whatever he had to now, and pay for it later. Except instead of just his muscles, his dick was hardening to the occasion, too, eagerly poking forward, searching for a home to bury itself inside. Gadreel whimpered and shucked off his pants and shoes in one go, and Sam bore him back onto the bed behind him, sheathing himself between his legs without another word.

Gadreel’s body welcomed him eagerly, tighter than Sam would have expected given his size… but no, of course Gadreel was still a virgin, even after thousands of years. He seemed overwhelmed all over again every time Sam touched him. Angels seldom indulged in recreational sex, and if Gadreel had truly been locked away all that time— “I’m never going to stop touching you,” Sam said fiercely. “We can stay just like this as long as you want…”

Gadreel’s eyes went wide and he clutched convulsively at Sam’s back, hips moving erratically, trying to follow Sam’s motions. Sam kept it slow, letting him adjust, and soon Gadreel caught his rhythm.

Never stopping was becoming more and more a valid plan, Sam was sure. Nothing had ever felt like this: being totally embraced by his bondmate, his angel. He greedily drank up every noise he pulled from the omega, every evidence of his pleasure, and Gadreel seemed even more lost to these sensations than Sam. Something deep inside Sam thrilled to making him lose control like this, a reserved, remote angel, all laid out for Sam to defile with his messy, heretical humanity. If the other angels could see their lost brother now … Sam kissed him again, just to feel those noises vibrating into his mouth. The other angels weren’t ever getting him back.

Afterwards, they lay together, still tied and touching everywhere they could. “Sam,” Gadreel panted, still coming down. “Sam. They can’t have you, either. I’ll kill any of them who try to touch you, I swear.”

Sam huffed a laugh. No human omega would’ve ever said anything like that… but then, Sam wasn’t most alphas, either. Most alphas hadn’t endured the torture that Sam had at Lucifer’s hands. He couldn’t deny that Gadreel’s vow made something warm and tender in his chest glow. “I believe you,” he said.

“I want to prove it,” Gadreel said. “I want everybody to know you’re mine, like I’m yours.” He touched the mark on the side of his neck where Sam’s teeth had dug in.

“You mean — bite me?” It shouldn’t have startled Sam as much as it did. The idea would never occur to a human omega, but Gadreel was a soldier as much as he was an omega for Sam to protect. And it wasn’t like Sam’s life had been marked by peace and safety. Sam _did_ feel better knowing that Gadreel could fight for him. Would fight for him. “All right,” he said, thoughtfully.

So what if people looked at them funny? Betas got to claim bite each other if they wanted to. Sam and Gadreel would be the first human alpha and angel omega pairing anybody had ever heard of. They might as well set another precedent while they were at it.

As Gadreel kissed Sam’s neck, searching for the perfect place to sink in his tooth marks, Sam smiled, more content than he would have thought possible. Day before yesterday, he’d only been waiting to die. And now he had someone not only saving his life, but making him _want_ to get up and back to living, the sooner the better.

Damn it. Sam wasn’t going to be able to be too mad at Dean for this, after all.


End file.
